Occultism and Kabbalah are only masks to hide the … · Blavatsky on Occultism and the real Kabbalah v. 13.11, , 28 May 2018 Page 1 of 17 Occultism and Kabbalah are only masks to

Blavatsky on Occultism and the real Kabbalah v. 13.11, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 28 May 2018

Page 1 of 17

Occultism and Kabbalah are

only masks to hide the sacred

truth from the profane

http://www.philaletheians.co.uk/

BLACK VERSUS WHITE MAGIC SERIES

THE HIDDEN TRUTHS OF OCCULTISM AND KABBALAH


Page 2 of 17

Eastern Occultism has veiled for ages its profound pantheistic Unitarianism with the exuberance of an exoteric polytheism; Jew-

ish Kabbalah, behind the screen of exoteric monotheism, pro-

duced a religion of sexual and phallic worship.

First published in Lucifer, Vol. X, No. 57, May 1892, pp. 185-96. Republished in Blavatsky Collected

Writings, (THE KABALAH AND THE KABALISTS AT THE CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY) VII pp. 250-68.

[A careful analysis of this essay makes it appear most likely that it was written much earlier than the ac-

tual date of its publication. While it may not be possible to ascertain its correct date, except for the fact

that material quoted therein places it after 1885, its similarity to other material on the same subject

suggests that it may have been written around 1886-87 For this reason it has been thought advisable to

publish this essay at this point in the chronological sequence of H.P. Blavatsky’s writings. — Boris de

Zirkoff.]

The spelling of the word is various; some write Cabbalah, others Kabbalah. The latest

writers have introduced a new spelling as more consonant with the Hebrew manner

of writing the word and make it Qabalah. This is more grammatical, perhaps, but as

no Englishman will ever pronounce a foreign name or word but in an Englishified

way, to write the term simply Kabalah seems less pretentious and answers as well.1

H.P. BLAVATSKY

NIVERSAL ASPIRATIONS, especially when impeded and suppressed in their

free manifestations, die out but to return with tenfold power. They are cyclic,

like every other natural phenomenon, whether mental or cosmic, universal

or national. Dam a river in one place, and the water will work its way into another,

and break out through it like a torrent.

One of such universal aspirations, the strongest perhaps in man’s nature, is the

longing to seek for the unknown; an ineradicable desire to penetrate below the sur-

face of things, a thirst for the knowledge of that which is hidden from others. Nine

children out of ten will break their toys to see what there is inside. It is an innate

feeling and is Protean in form. It rises from the ridiculous (or perhaps rather from the

reprehensible) to the sublime, for it is limited to indiscreet inquisitiveness, prying in-

to neighbour’s secrets, in the uneducated, and it expands in the cultured into that

1 [Our preferred orthography, throughout our study notes including this one, is Kabbalah, Kabbalist, etc. — ED.

PHIL.]

U





Page 3 of 17

love for knowledge which ends in leading them to the summits of science, and fills

the Academies and the Royal Institutions with learned men.

But this pertains to the world of the objective. The man in whom the metaphysical

element is stronger than the physical, is propelled by this natural aspiration towards

the mystical, to that which the materialist is pleased to call a “superstitious belief in

the supernatural.” The Church, while encouraging our aspirations after the holy —

on strictly theological and orthodox lines, of course — condemns at the same time

the human craving after the same, whenever the practical search after it departs

from its own lines. The memory of the thousands of illiterate “witches,” and the hun-

dreds of learned alchemists, philosophers and other heretics, tortured, burnt, and

otherwise put to death during the Middle Ages, remains as an ever-present witness

to that arbitrary and despotic interference.

In the present age both Church and Science, the blindly-believing and the all-

denying, are arrayed against the Secret Sciences, though both Church and Science

believed in and practised them — especially the Kabbalah — at a not very distant pe-

riod of history. One says now, “It is of the devil!” the other that “the devil is a crea-

tion of the Church, and a disgraceful superstition”; in short, that there is neither

devil nor occult sciences. The first one forgets that it has publicly proclaimed, hardly

400 years ago, the Jewish Kabbalah as the greatest witness to the truths of Christi-

anity;1 the second, that the most illustrious men of science were all alchemists, as-

trologers and magicians, witness Paracelsus, Van Helmont, Roger Bacon, etc. But

consistency has never been a virtue of Modern Science. It has religiously believed in

all which it now denies, and it has denied all that it now believes in, from the circula-

tion of the blood up to steam and electric power.

This sudden change of attitude in both powers cannot prevent events from taking

their natural course. The last quarter of our century is witnessing an extraordinary

outbreak of occult studies, and magic dashes once more its powerful waves against

the rocks of Church and Science, which it is slowly but as surely undermining. Any-

one whose natural mysticism impels him to seek for sympathetic contact with other

minds, is astonished to find how large a number of persons are not only interested in

Mysticism generally, but are actually themselves Kabbalists. The river dammed dur-

ing the Middle Ages has flowed since noiselessly underground, and has now burst up

as an irrepressible torrent. Hundreds to-day study the Kabbalah, where, scarcely one

or two could I have been found some fifty years ago, when fear of the Church was

1 This is demonstrated by what we know of the life of John Pico della Mirándola. Ginsburg and others have

stated the following facts, namely, that after having studied the Kabbalah Mirándola “found that there is more Christianity in the Kabbalah than Judaism; he discovered in it proof for the doctrine of the Trinity, the Incarna-tion, the divinity of Christ, original sin, the expiation thereof by Christ, the heavenly Jerusalem, the fall of the angels, the order of the angels, purgatory and hell-fire . . . ,” and so on. In 1486, when only twenty-four years old, he published “nine hundred Theses, which were placarded in Rome [not without the consent or knowledge surely of the Pope and his Government? ], and which he undertook to defend in the presence of all European scholars, whom he invited to the eternal city, promising to defray their travelling expenses. Among these Theses was the following, ‘No science yields greater proof of the divinity of Christ than magic and the Kabbalah.’ ” The reason why will be shown in the present article.

[In the above footnote, H.P. Blavatsky quotes from Christian D. Ginsburg’s The Kabbalah: Its Doctrines, Devel-opment and Literature, London, Longmans, Green, etc., 1865; also George Routledge and Sons, 1925 (p. 206 in latter ed.). Ginsburg, who gives the Latin text of Mirandola’s own words, gives as references the Index a Jacobo Gaffarello, published by Wolf, Bibliotheca Hebraea, Vol. I, p. 9 at the end of the volume, and Apologia, p. 42, opp. Vol. I, Basel, 1601. — Boris de Zirkoff.]





Page 4 of 17

still a powerful factor in men’s lives. But the long-pent-up torrent has now diverged

into two streams — Eastern Occultism and the Jewish Kabbalah; the traditions of

the Wisdom-Religion of the races that preceded the Adam of the “Fall”; and the sys-

tem of the ancient Lévites of Israel, who most ingeniously veiled a portion of that reli-

gion of the Pantheists under the mask of monotheism.

Unfortunately many are called but few chosen. The two systems threaten the world

of the mystics with a speedy conflict, which, instead of increasing the spread of the

One universal Truth, will necessarily only weaken and impede its progress. Yet, the

question is not, once more, which is the one truth. For both are founded upon the

eternal verities of prehistoric knowledge, as both, in the present age and the state of

mental transition through which humanity is now passing, can give out only a cer-

tain portion of these verities. It is simply a question: “Which of the two systems con-

tains most unadulterated facts: and, most important of all — which of the two pre-

sents its teachings in the most Catholic (i.e., unsectarian) and impartial manner?”

One — the Eastern system — has veiled for ages its profound pantheistic unitarian-

ism with the exuberance of an exoteric polytheism; the other — as said above — with

the screen of exoteric monotheism. Both are but masks to hide the sacred truth from

the profane; for neither the Āryan nor the Semitic philosophers have ever accepted

either the anthropomorphism of the many Gods, or the personality of the one God, as

a philosophical proposition. But it is impossible within the limits we have at our dis-

posal, to attempt to enter upon a minute discussion of this question. We must be

content with a simpler task. The rites and ceremonies of the Jewish law seem to be

an abyss, which long generations of Christian Fathers, and especially of Protestant

Reformers have vainly sought to fill in with their far-fetched interpretations. Yet all

the early Christians, Paul and the Gnostics, regarded and proclaimed the Jewish law

as essentially distinct from the new Christian law. St. Paul called the former an alle-

gory, and St. Stephen told the Jews an hour before being stoned that they had not

even kept the law that they had received from the angels (the aeons), and as to the

Holy Ghost (the impersonal Logos or Christos, as taught at Initiation) they had re-

sisted and rejected it as their fathers had done.1 This was virtually telling them that

their law was inferior to the later one. Notwithstanding that the Mosaic Books which

we think we have in the Old Testament, cannot be more than two or three centuries

older than Christianity, the Protestants have nevertheless made of them their Sacred

Canon, on a par with, if not higher than, the Gospels. But when the Pentateuch was

written, or rather rewritten after Ezdras, i.e., after the Rabbis had settled upon a new

departure, a number of additions were made which were taken bodily from Persian

and Babylonian doctrines; and this at a period subsequent to the colonization of Ju-

dea under the authority of the kings of Persia. This re-editing was of course done in

the same way as with all such Scriptures. They were originally written in a secret

key, or cipher, known only to the Initiates. But instead of adapting the contents to

the highest spiritual truths as taught in the third, the highest, degree of Initiation,

and expressed in symbolical language — as may be seen even in the exoteric Purānas

of India — the writers of the Pentateuch, revised and corrected, they who cared but

for earthly and national glory, adapted only to astro-physiological symbols the sup-

1 Acts vii





Page 5 of 17

posed events of the Abrahams, Jacobs, and Solomons, and the fantastic history of

their little race. Thus they produced, under the mask of monotheism, a religion of

sexual and phallic worship, one that concealed an adoration of the Gods, or the low-

er aeons. No one would maintain that anything like the dualism and the angelolatry

of Persia, brought by the Jews from the captivity, could ever be found in the real

Law, or Books of Moses. For how, in such case, could the Sadducees, who rever-

enced that law, reject angels, as well as the soul and its immortality? And yet angels,

if not the soul’s immortal nature, are distinctly asserted to exist in the Old Testa-

ment, and are found in the Jewish modern scrolls.1

This fact of the successive and widely differing redactions of that which we loosely

term the Books of Moses, and of their triple adaptation to the first (lowest), second,

and third, or highest, degree of Sodalian initiation, and that still more puzzling fact

of the diametrically opposite beliefs of the Sadducees and the other Jewish sects, all

accepting, nevertheless, the same Revelation — can be made comprehensible only in

the light of our Esoteric explanation. It also shows the reason why, when Moses and

the Prophets belonged to the Sodalities (the great Mysteries), the latter yet seem so

often to fulminate against the abominations of the Sodales and their “Sod.” For had

the Old Canon been translated literally, as is claimed, instead of being adapted to a

monotheism absent from it, and to the spirit of each sect, as the differences in the

Septuagint and Vulgate prove, the following contradictory sentences would be added

to the hundreds of other inconsistencies in “Holy Writ.”

Sod Ihoh [the mysteries of Johoh, or Jehovah] are for those who fear him,

says Psalms xxv, 14, mistranslated

“the secret of the Lord is with them that fear him.”

Again

Al [El] is terrible in the great Sod of the Kadeshim,

is rendered as

God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints.2

The title of Kadeshim (Kadosh, sing.) means in reality something quite different from

saints though it is generally explained as “priests,” the “holy” and the “Initiated”; for

the Kadeshim were simply the galli of the abominable mysteries (Sod) of the exoteric

rites. They were, in short, the male Nautches of the temples, during whose initiations

the arcanum, the Sod (from which “Sodom,” perchance) of physiological and sexual

evolution, were divulged. These rites all belonged to the first degree of the Mysteries,

so protected and beloved by David — the “friend of God.” They must have been very

ancient with the Jews, and were ever abominated by the true Initiates; thus we find

the dying Jacob’s prayer is that his soul should not come into the secret (Sod, in the

original) of Simeon and Lévi (the priestly caste) and into their assembly during which

1 This is just what the Gnostics had always maintained quite independently of Christians. In their doctrines the

Jewish God, the “Elōhīm,” was a hierarchy of low terrestrial angels — an Ialdabaōth, spiteful and jealous.

2 Psalms lxxxix, 7





Page 6 of 17

they “slew a man.”1 And yet Moses is claimed by the Kabbalists as chief of the So-

dales! Reject the explanation of the Secret Doctrine and the whole Pentateuch be-

comes the abomination of abominations.

Therefore, do we find Jehovah, the anthropomorphic God, everywhere in the Bible,

but of AIN SOPH not one word is said. And therefore, also, was the Jewish metrology

quite different from the numeral methods of other people. Instead of serving as an

adjunct to other prearranged methods, to penetrate therewith as with a key into the

hidden or implied meaning contained within the literal sentences — as the initiated

Brahmans do to this day, when reading their sacred book — the numeral system

with the Jews is, as the author of “Hebrew Metrology” tells us, the Holy Writ itself:

. . . that very thing, in esse, on which, and out of which, and by the continuous

interweaving use of which, the very text of the Bible has been made to result, as

its enunciation, from the beginning word of Genesis to the closing word of Deu-

teronomy.2

So true is this, indeed, that the authors of the New Testament who had to blend their

system with both the Jewish and the Pagan, had to borrow their most metaphysical

symbols not from the Pentateuch, or even the Kabbalah, but from the Āryan astro-

symbology. One instance will suffice. Whence the dual meaning of the First-born, the

Lamb, the Unborn, and the Eternal — all relating to the Logos or Christos? We say

from the Sanskrit Aja, a word the meanings of which are:

The Ram, or the Lamb, the first sign of the Zodiac, called in astronomy Mesha;

The Unborn, a title of the first Logos, or Brahma, the self-existent cause of all,

described and so referred to in the Upanishads.

The Hebrew Kabbalistic Gematria, Notaricon, and T’mura are very ingenious meth-

ods, giving the key to the secret meaning of Jewish symbology, one that applied the

relations of their sacred imagery only to one side of Nature — namely, the physical

side. Their myths and the names and the events attributed to their Biblical person-

ages were made to correspond with astronomical revolutions and sexual evolution,

and had nought to do with the spiritual states of man; hence no such correspond-

ences are to be found in the reading of their sacred canon. The real Mosaic Jews of

the Sodales, whose direct heirs on the line of initiation were the Sadducees, had no

spirituality in them, nor did they feel any need for it apparently. The reader, whose

ideas of Initiation and Adeptship are intimately blended with the mysteries of the af-

ter-life and soul survival, will now see the reason for the great yet natural inconsist-

encies found on almost every page of the Bible. Thus, in the Book of Job, a Kabbalis-

tic treatise on Egypto-Arabic Initiation, the symbolism of which conceals the highest

spiritual mysteries, one finds yet this significant and purely materialistic verse:

1 (Genesis xlix, 5-6) To “slay a man” meant, in the symbolism of the Lesser Mysteries, the rite during which

crimes against nature were committed, for which purpose the Kadeshim were set aside. Thus Cain “slays” his brother Abel, who, esoterically, is a female character and represents the first human woman in the Third Race after the separation of sexes. See also the Source of Measures, pp. 253, 283, etc.

2 [J. Ralston Skinner’s essay on “Hebrew Metrology,” in the Masonic Review, Cincinnati, Vol. 63, July 1885, p. 323. — Boris de Zirkoff.]





Page 7 of 17

Man that is born of a woman is . . . like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also

as a shadow, and continueth not.1

But Job speaks here of the personality, and he is right; for no Initiate would say that

the personality long survived the death of the physical body; the spirit alone is im-

mortal. But this sentence in Job, the oldest document in the Bible, makes only the

more brutally materialistic that in Ecclesiastes iii, 19 et seq., one of the latest rec-

ords. The writer, who speaks in the name of Solomon, and says that:

. . . that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even . . . as the one

dieth, so dieth the other . . . so that a man hath no pre-eminence over a beast,

is quite on a par with the modern Haeckels, and expresses only that which he

thinks.

Therefore, no knowledge of Kabbalistic methods can help one in finding that in the

Old Testament which has never been there since the Book of the Law was rewritten

(rather than found) by Hilkiah. Nor can the reading of the Egyptian symbols be much

helped by the mediæval Kabbalistic systems. Indeed, it is but the blindness of a pi-

ous illusion that can lead anyone to discover any spiritual and metaphysical corre-

spondences or meaning in the Jewish purely astro-physiological symbology. On the

other hand, the ancient pagan religious systems, so-called, are all built upon ab-

stract spiritual speculations, their gross external forms being, perhaps, the most se-

cure veil to hide their inner meaning.

It can be demonstrated, on the authority of the most learned Kabbalists of our day

that the Zohar, and almost all the Kabbalistic works, have passed through Christian

hands. Hence, that they cannot be considered any longer as universal, but have be-

come simply sectarian. This is well shown by Pico della Mirandola’s thesis upon the

proposition that “no Science yields greater proof of the divinity of Christ than magic

and the Kabbalah.” This is true of the divinity of the Logos, or of the Christos of the

Gnostics; because that Christos remains the same WORD of the ever-unmanifested

Deity, whether we call it Parabrahm or Ain Soph — by whatever name he himself is

called — Krishna, Buddha, or Ormazd. But this Christos is neither the Christ of the

Churches, nor yet the Jesus of the Gospels; it is only an impersonal Principle. Never-

theless the Latin Church made capital of this thesis; the result of which was, that as

in the last century, so it is now in Europe and America. Almost every Kabbalist is

now a believer in a personal God, in the very teeth of the original impersonal Ain

Soph, and is, moreover, a more or less heterodox, but still, a Christian. This is due

entirely to the ignorance of most people,

That the Kabbalah (the Zohar especially) we have, is not the original Book of

Splendour, written down from the oral teachings of Shimon Ben Yochai; and

That the latter, being indeed an exposition of the hidden sense of the writings of

Moses (so-called) was as equally good an exponent of the Esoteric meaning con-

tained under the shell of the literal sense in the Scriptures of any Pagan reli-

gion.

1 xiv, 1- 2





Page 8 of 17

Nor do the modern Kabbalists seem to be aware of the fact, that the Kabbalah as it

now stands, with its more than revised texts, its additions made to apply to the New

as much as to the Old Testament, its numerical language recomposed so as to apply

to both, and its crafty veiling, is no longer able now to furnish all the ancient and

primitive meanings. In short that no Kabbalistic work now extant among the Western

nations can display any greater mysteries of nature, than those which Ezra and Co.,

and the later co-workers of Moses de Leon, desired to unfold; the Kabbalah contains

no more than the Syrian and Chaldean Christians and ex-Gnostics of the thirteenth

century wanted those works to reveal. And what they do reveal hardly repays the

trouble of passing one’s life in studying it. For if they may, and do, present a field of

immense interest to the Mason and mathematician, they can teach scarcely anything

to the student hungering after spiritual mysteries. The use of all the seven keys to

unlock the mysteries of Being in this life, and the lives to come, as in those which

have gone by, show that the Chaldean Book of Numbers, and the Upanishads unde-

niably conceal the most divine philosophy — as it is that of the Universal Wisdom

Religion. But the Zohar, now so mutilated, can show nothing of the kind. Besides

which, who of the Western philosophers or students has all those keys at his com-

mand? These are now entrusted only to the highest Initiates in Gupta-Vidyā, to great

Adepts; and, surely it is no self-taught tyro, not even an isolated mystic, however

great his genius and natural powers, who can hope to unravel in one life more than

one or two of the lost keys.1

The key to the Jewish metrology has been undeniably unravelled, and a very im-

portant key it is. But as we may infer from the words of the discoverer himself in the

footnote just quoted — though that key (concealed in the “Sacred Metrology”) dis-

closes the fact that “Holy Writ” contains “a rational science of sober and great worth,”

yet it helps to unveil no higher spiritual truth than that which all astrologers have

insisted upon in every age; i.e., the close relation between the sidereal and all the ter-

restrial bodies — human beings included. The history of our globe and its humani-

ties is prototyped in the astronomical heavens from first to last, though the Royal So-

ciety of Physicists may not become aware of it for ages yet to come. By the showing of

the said discoverer himself, “the burden of this secret doctrine, this Cabbalah, is of

pure truth and right reason, for it is geometry with applied proper numbers, of as-

tronomy and of a system of measure, viz., the Masonic inch, the twenty-four inch

gauge (or the double foot), the yard, and the mile. These were claimed to be of divine

revelation and impartation, by the possession and use of which, it could be said of

1 The writer in the Masonic Review is thus quite justified in saying as he does, that

“the Cabalistic field is that in which astrologers, necromancers, black and white magicians, fortune tell-ers, chiromancers, and all the like, revel and make claims to supernaturalism ad nauseam” ;

and he adds:

“The Christian, quarrying into its mass of mysticism, claims for it support and authority for that most perplexing of all problems, the Holy Trinity, and the portrayed character of Christ . . . With equal assur-ance, but more effrontery, the knave, in the name of Cabbalah, will sell amulets and charms, tell for-tunes, draw horoscopes, and just as readily give specific rules . . . for raising the dead, and actually — the devil . . . Discovery has yet to be made of what Cabbalah really consists, before any weight or au-

thority can be given to the name. On that discovery will rest the question whether the name should be received as related to matters worthy of rational acknowledgment.” . . . “The writer claims that such a discovery has been made, and that the same embraces rational science of sober and great worth.”

“The Cabbalah,” from the Masonic Review for September 1885, pp. 65-66, by Brother J. Ralston Skinner (McMillan Lodge, No. 141). [Italics are H.P. Blavatsky’s.]





Page 9 of 17

Abram: ‘Blessed of the Most High God, Abram, measure of heaven and earth’ ” — the

“creative law of measure.”

And is this all that the primitive Kabbalah contained? No; for the author remarks

elsewhere: “What the originally and intended right reading was [in the Pentateuch ]

who can tell?”1 Thus allowing the reader to infer that the meanings implied in the

exoteric, or dead letter of the Hebrew texts, are by no means only those revealed by

metrology. Therefore we are justified in saying that the Jewish Kabbalah, with its

numerical methods, is now only one of the keys to the ancient mysteries, and that

the Eastern or Āryan system alone can supply the rest, and unveil the whole truth of

Creation.2

What this numeral system is, we leave its discoverer to explain himself. According to

him:

Like all other human productions of the kind, the Hebrew text of the Bible was

in characters which could serve as sound signs for syllabic utterance, or for

this purpose what are called letters. Now in the first place, these original char-

acter signs were also pictures, each one of them; and these pictures of them-

selves stood for ideas which could be communicated — much like the original

Chinese letters. Gustav Seyffarth shows that the Egyptian hieroglyphics num-

bered over six hundred picture characters, which embraced the modified use,

syllabically, of the original number of letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The char-

acters of the Hebrew text of the Sacred Scroll were divided into classes, in

which the characters of each class were interchangeable; whereby one form

might be exchanged for another to carry a modified signification, both by letter,

and picture and number. Seyffarth shows the modified form of the very ancient

Hebrew alphabet in the old Coptic by this law of interchange of characters.3

This law of permitted interchange of letters is to be found quite fully set forth in

the Hebrew dictionaries . . . Though recognized . . . it is very perplexing and

hard to understand, because we have lost the specific use and power of such

interchange. [Just so!] In the second place, these characters stood for numbers

— to be used for numbers as we use specific number signs — though, also,

there is very much to prove that the old Hebrews were in possession of the so-

called Arabic numerals, as we have them, from the straight line 1 to the zero

characters, together making 1+9=10. . . . In the third place, it is said, and it

seems to be proven, that these characters stood for musical notes; so that for

instance, the arrangement of the letters in the first chapter of Genesis, can be

1 [ibid., p. 68]

2 Even as it stands now, the Kabbalah, with its several methods, can only puzzle by offering several versions; it

can never divulge the whole truth. The readings of even the first sentence of Genesis are several. To quote the author: “It is made to be read ‘B’rashith bārā Elōhīm,’ etc., ‘ In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth;’ wherein Elōhīm is a plural nominative to a verb in the third person singular. Nachmanides called atten-tion to the fact that the text might suffer the reading, ‘B’rash ithbārā Elōhīm,’ etc., ‘ In the head (source or be-ginning) created itself (or developed) Gods, the heavens and the earth,’ really a more grammatical rendering.”

[ibid., p. 68] And yet we are forced to believe the Jewish monotheism!

3 Before Seyffarth can hope to have his hypothesis accepted, however, he will have to prove that (a) the Israel-

ites had an alphabet of their own when the ancient Egyptians or Copts had as yet none; and (b) that the Hebrew of the later scrolls is the Hebrew, or “mystery language” of Moses, which the Secret Doctrine denies. [H.P. Bla-vatsky]





Page 10 of 17

rendered musically, or by song.1 Another law of the Hebrew characters was that

only the consonantal signs were characterized — the vowels were not charac-

terized, but were supplied. If one will try it he will find that a consonant of itself

cannot be made vocal without the help of a vowel;2 therefore . . . the conso-

nants made the framework of a word, but to give it life or utterance into the air,

so as to impart the thought of the mind, and the feeling of the heart, the vowels

had to be supplied.3

Now, even if we suppose, for argument’s sake, that the “framework,” i.e., the conso-

nants of the Pentateuch are the same as in the days of Moses, what changes must

have been effected with those scrolls — written in such a poor language as the He-

brew, with its less than two dozens of letters — when re-written time after time, and

its vowels and points supplied in ever-new combinations! No two minds are alike,

and the feelings of the heart change. What could remain, we ask, of the original writ-

ings of Moses, if such ever existed, when they had been lost for nearly 800 years and

then found when every remembrance of them must have disappeared from the minds

of the most learned, and Hilkiah has them re-written by Shaphan, the scribe? When

lost again, they are re-written again by Ezra; lost once more in 168 B.C. the volume

or scrolls were again destroyed; and when finally they reappear, we find them

dressed in their Masoretic disguise! We may know something of Ben Chajim,4 who

published the Masorah of the scrolls in the fifteenth century; we can know nothing of

Moses, this is certain, unless we become — Initiates of the Eastern School.

Ahrens, when speaking of the letters so arranged in the Hebrew sacred scrolls — that

they were of themselves musical notes — had probably never studied Āryan Hindu

music. In the Sanskrit language there is no need to so arrange letters in the sacred

ollas that they should become musical. For the whole Sanskrit alphabet and the Ve-

das, from the first word to the last, are musical notations reduced to writing, and the

two are inseparable.5 As Homer distinguished between the “language of Gods” and

the language of men,6 so did the Hindus.

The Devanāgari — the Sanskrit characters — is the “Speech of the Gods” and San-

skrit the divine language.7 As to the Hebrew let the modern Isaiahs cry “Woe is me!”

1 Not the Hebrew helped by the Masoretic signs, at all events. See further on, however. [H.P. Blavatsky]

2 And therefore as the vowels were furnished ad libitum by the Masorets they could make of a word what they

liked! [H.P. Blavatsky]

3 [op. cit., Masonic Review, September 1885, p. 67]

4 [Vide Bio-bibliographical Index under JACOB BEN HAYYIM.]

5 See The Theosophist, Vol. I, November 1879, article “Hindu Music,” pp. 46-50.

6 Thes. xiv, 289, 290

[It is uncertain what is meant here by Thes., unless it be some Thesaurus of classical languages or antiquities. However, the following passages in Homer mention several names as being used either by gods or by men re-spectively; Iliad, I, 403; XIV, 290-91; XX, 73; Odyssey, X, 305; XII, 61. — Boris de Zirkoff.]

7 The Sanskrit letters are three times as numerous as the poor twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. They

are all musical and are read, or rather chanted, according to a system given in very old Tāntrika works (see Tantra Śāstras ); and are called Devanāgari “the speech or language of the Gods.” And since each answers to a numeral, and has therefore a far larger scope for expression and meaning, it must necessarily be far more per-fect and far older than the Hebrew, which followed the system, but could apply it only in a very limited way. If either of the two languages were taught to humanity by the Gods, surely it is rather Sanskrit — the perfect of the most perfect languages on Earth — than Hebrew, the roughest and the poorest. For once we believe in a





Page 11 of 17

and confess that which “the newly-discovered mode of language (Hebrew metrology)

veiled under the words of the sacred Text” has now clearly shown. Read the Source of

Measures, read all the other able treatises on the subject by the same author. And

then the reader will find that with the utmost good-will and incessant efforts covering

many years of study, that laborious scholar, having penetrated under the mask of

the system, can find in it little more than pure anthropomorphism. In man, and on

man, alone, rests the whole scheme of the Kabbalah, and to man and his functions,

on however enlarged a scale, everything in it is made to apply. Man, as the Archetyp-

al Man or Adam, is made to contain the whole Kabbalistic system. He is the great

symbol and shadow, thrown by the manifested Kosmos, itself the reflection of the

impersonal and ever incomprehensible principle; and this shadow furnishes by its

construction — the personal grown out of the impersonal — a kind of objective and

tangible symbol of everything visible and invisible in the Universe.

As the First Cause was utterly unknown and unnameable, such names as were

adopted as most sacred [in Bible and Kabbalah] and commonly made applica-

ble to the Divine Being, were, after all, not so,1

but were mere manifestations of the unknowable, such

. . . In a cosmic or natural sense, as could become known to man. Hence these

names were not so sacred as commonly held, inasmuch as with all created

things they themselves were but names or enunciations of things known . . . As

to metrology: Instead of a valuable adjunct to the Biblical system . . . the entire

text of the Holy Writ, in the Mosaic books, is not only replete with it, as a sys-

tem, but the system itself is that very thing, in esse. . . . 2

— from the first to the last word.

. . . For instance, the narratives of the first day, of the six days, of the seventh

day, of the making of Adam, male and female, of Adam in the Garden, of the

Garden itself, of the formation of the woman out of the man, of the extension of

the time to the flood with the genealogy, of Ararat, of the Ark, of Noah with his

dove and raven, of the space and incidents of Abram’s travel from Ur of the

Chaldeans down into Egypt before Pharaoh, of Abram’s life, of the three cove-

nants, . . . of the construction of the Tabernacle and the dwelling of Jehovah, of

the famous 603,550 as the number of men capable of bearing arms who made,

with their families the exodus out of Egypt and the like — all are but so many

modes of enunciation of this system of geometry, of applied number ratios, of

measures and their various applications. . . . 3

And the author of “Hebrew Metrology” ends by saying:

Whatever may have been the Jewish mode of complete interpretation of these

books, the Christian Church has taken them for what they show on their first

language of divine origin, we can hardly believe at the same time that angels or Gods or any divine messenger should have selected the inferior in preference to the superior.

1 [J.R. Skinner’s essay on “Hebrew Metrology,” Masonic Review, July 1885, p. 324]

2 [ibid., pp. 324 & 323 resp.]

3 [ibid., p. 323]





Page 12 of 17

face — and that only . . . The Christian Church has never attributed to these

books any property beyond this; and herein has existed its great error.1

But the Western European Kabbalists, and many of the American (though luckily not

all), claim to correct this error of their Church. How far do they succeed and where is

the evidence of their success? Read all the volumes published on the Kabbalah in

the course of this century; and if we except a few volumes issued recently in America,

it will be found that not a single Kabbalist has penetrated even skin deep below the

surface of that “first face.” Their digests are pure speculation and hypotheses and —

no more. One bases his glosses upon Ragon’s Masonic revelations; another takes

Fabre d’Olivet2 for his prophet — this writer having never been a Kabbalist, though

he was a genius of wonderful, almost miraculous, erudition, and a polyglot linguist

greater than whom there was since his day none, even among the philologists of the

French Academy, which refused to take notice of his work. Others, again, believe that

no greater Kabbalist was born among the sons of men than the late Éliphas Lévi — a

charming and witty writer, who, however, has more mystified than taught in his

many volumes on Magic. Let not the reader conclude from these statements that re-

al, learned Kabbalists are not to be found in the Old and New Worlds. There are initi-

ated Occultists, who are Kabbalists, scattered hither and thither, most undeniably,

especially in Germany and Poland. But these will not publish what they know, nor

will they call themselves Kabbalists. The “Sodalian oath” of the third degree holds

good now as ever.

But there are those who are pledged to no secrecy. Those writers are the only ones

on whose information the Kabbalists ought to rely, however incomplete their state-

ments from the standpoint of a full revelation, i.e., of the sevenfold Esoteric meaning.

It is they who care least for those secrets after which alone the modern Hermetist

and Kabbalist is now hungering such as the transmutation into gold, and the Elixir

of Life, or the Philosopher’s Stone — for physical purposes. For all the chief secrets of

the Occult teachings are concerned with the highest spiritual knowledge. They deal

with mental states, not with physical processes and their transformations. In a word,

the real, genuine Kabbalah, the only original copy of which is contained in the Chal-

dean Book of Numbers, pertains to, and teaches about, the realm of spirit, not that of

matter.

What, then, is the Kabbalah, in reality, and does it afford a revelation of such higher

spiritual mysteries? The writer answers most emphatically NO. What the Kabbalistic

keys and methods were, in the origin of the Pentateuch and other sacred scrolls and

documents of the Jews now no longer extant, is one thing; what they are now is quite

another. The Kabbalah is a manifold language; moreover, one whose reading is de-

termined by the dead-letter face text of the record to be deciphered. It teaches and

helps one to read the Esoteric real meaning hidden under the mask of that dead let-

ter; it cannot create a text or make one find in the document under study that which

1 [This, however, is the closing paragraph of J.R. Skinner’s article on “The Cabbalah,” and not the one on “He-

brew Metrology.” — Boris de Zirkoff.]

2 [Fabre d’Olivet is mentioned by H.P. Blavatsky many times in her various writings, sometimes approvingly

and at other times critically. Because of the marked influence he has exercised upon the minds of many stu-dents, especially in Europe, it has been thought advisable to include in the present Volume a fairly comprehen-sive survey of his life and work. Vide the Bio-Bibliographical Index, s.v. FABRE D’OLIVET. — Boris de Zirkoff.]





Page 13 of 17

has never been in it from the beginning. The Kabbalah — such as we have it now —

is inseparable from the text of the Old Testament, as remodelled by Ezra and others.

And as the Hebrew Scriptures, or their contents, have been repeatedly altered —

notwithstanding the ancient boast that not one letter in the Sacred Scroll, not an io-

ta, has ever been changed — so no Kabbalistic methods can help us by reading in it

anything besides what there is in it. He who does it is no Kabbalist, but a dreamer.

Lastly, the profane reader should learn the difference between the Kabbalah and the

Kabbalistic works, before he is made to face other arguments. For the Kabbalah is no

special volume, nor is it even a system. It consists of seven different systems applied

to seven different interpretations of any given Esoteric work or subject. These sys-

tems were always transmitted orally by one generation of Initiates to another, under

the pledge of the Sodalian oath, and they have never been recorded in writing by any

one. Those who speak of translating the Kabbalah into this or another tongue may as

well talk of translating the wordless signal-chants of the Bedouin brigands into some

particular language. Kabbalah, as a word, is derived from the root Kbl (Kebel ) “to

hand over,” or “to receive” orally. It is erroneous to say, as Kenneth Mackenzie does

in his Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia,1 that “ the doctrine of the Kabbalah refers to the

system handed down by oral transmission, and is nearly allied to . . . tradition”; for

in this sentence the first proposition only is true, while the second is not. It is not

allied to “tradition” but to the seven veils or the seven truths orally revealed at Initia-

tion. Of these methods, pertaining to the universal pictorial languages — meaning by

“pictorial” any cipher, number, symbol, or other glyph that can be represented,

whether objectively or subjectively (mentally) — three only exist at present in the

Jewish system.2 Thus, if Kabbalah as a word is Hebrew, the system itself is no more

Jewish than is sunlight; it is universal.

On the other hand, the Jews can claim the Zohar, Sēpher Yetzīrāh (Book of Creation),

Sēpher Dzeniuta, and a few others, as their own undeniable property and as Kabba-

listic works.

“The Origin of Good and Evil,” and

“The Original Sin is a Jewish invention, ” in the same series. — ED. PHIL.

1 [p. 399]

2 Of these three not one can be made to apply to purely spiritual metaphysics. One divulges the relations of the

sidereal bodies to the terrestrial, especially the human; the other relates to the evolution of the human races and the sexes; the third to Kosmotheogony and is metrological.



EDITORIAL NOTES BY BORIS DE ZIRKOFF


Page 14 of 17

Editorial Notes by Boris de Zirkoff

From Blavatsky Collected Writings, VII pp. 269-72.

As many students are unfamiliar with Kabbalistic literature, it has been deemed ad-

visable to append the following succinct information for their benefit. As the subject

is a very vast one, only essential data have been included.

The Zohar, known also as the Midrash ha-Zohar and Sēpher ha-Zohar, meaning

“Splendour,” is the great storehouse of ancient Hebrew Theosophy, supplemented by

the philosophical doctrines of mediaeval Jewish Rabbis. Together with the Sēpher

Yetzīrāh, or “Book of Formation,” one of the most ancient Kabbalistic works, the col-

lection of the Zohar represents the oldest extant treatises on the Hebrew esoteric doc-

trines. It consists of several distinct but interrelated tracts, each discussing some

special branch of the subject; each of these tracts consists again of several portions,

and contains a kernel of ancient teachings, around which are clustered comments

and explanations written by several hands and at very different epochs. There is con-

siderable evidence to show that the kernel of these doctrines is of very remote antiq-

uity, and embodies the remnants of one of the oldest systems of philosophy that have

come down to us. Sufficient proof exists to connect some of these tenets with the pe-

riod of the return from the Babylonian captivity, as they bear the impress of the still

more ancient Chaldaean secret lore.

The Zohar is largely a mystical and allegorical commentary on the Pentateuch. To-

gether with various Appendices that must have been added to the collection at some

later time, it deals with a large number of subjects, such as Ain Soph, the Emana-

tions, the Sephīrōth, Adam Kadmon, the Revolution of Souls (Gilgūlīm), the use of

numbers and letters, the casting of lots, good and evil, etc. The largest portion of this

collection is written in one of the Aramaic dialects; other portions are in Hebrew; the

presence of still other dialects adds greatly to the difficulties of an accurate transla-

tion.

Tradition current among mediaeval Rabbis assigned the authorship of the Zohar to

Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai, who lived in the reign of the Roman Emperor Titus, A.D.

70-80, and was one of the most important Tannaïm in the post-Hadrianic period. He

was born in Galilee, and died at Meron, near Safid, in Palestine, where his traditional

tomb is shown. His principal teacher was Akiba, whose Academy at Bene-Berak he

attended for a good many years. Ordained after Akiba’s death by Judah ben Baba,

he escaped from Jerusalem during the violent struggle of the Jews with the Romans,

and hid himself in a cave for thirteen years. It is here that Shimon ben Yohai, a pro-

found Kabbalist already, was instructed, according to tradition, by the prophet Elias

himself. In his turn, he taught his disciples, Rabbi Eleazar and Rabbi Abba, who

committed to writing those traditional teachings of the earlier Tannaïm which in later

ages became known as the Zohar. After his seclusion, Shimon ben Yohai settled in

Galilee and founded a school of his own, gaining the reputation of a wonder-worker.

He was sent to Rome with Eleazar ben Jose, to obtain the repeal of imperial orders

which had forbidden certain Jewish ceremonial observances, and returned after a

successful mission.





Page 15 of 17

While the name of Shimon ben Yohai is associated with the history of the Zohar, it is

nevertheless certain that a very large portion of this compilation is not older than

approximately 1280, when it was edited in manuscript form by Moses ben Shem-Tob

de Leon. The latter was a famous Kabbalistic writer born at Leon, Spain, about 1250,

and who lived in Guadalajara, Valladolid and Avila, and died at Arevalo, in 1305.

Familiar with the mediaeval mystical literature, he was especially conversant with

the writings of Solomon ben Judah ibn Gabirol (Avicebron), Judah ha-Lévi, and

Maimonides. Apart from his work on the Zohar, he is known for other dissertations,

among them the Ha-Nephesh ha-’hokhmah,1 which deals with the human soul as a

likeness of its heavenly prototype, and with the transmigration of souls. He led a

wandering life, and was a man of brilliant intellect and lofty religious idealism.

It is most likely that Moses de Leon was the first one to produce the Zohar as a

whole, but many of its constituent portions date from the time of Shimon ben Yohai

and the Second Temple, even though historical evidence is not forthcoming of the

many steps in the course of transmission of these doctrines from ante-Roman times.

The Zohar in its present Hebrew form was first printed at Mantua (1558-60) and

Cremona (1558); only one MSS. of it is in existence prior to the first edition; another

edition appeared at Lublin, in 1623. Baron Christian Knorr von Rosenroth (1636-89),

a very able and searching Hebrew scholar, translated several treatises of the Zohar

into Latin, and published them, together with the Hebrew text under the title of Kab-

balah Denudata.2 C. Liddell MacGregor Mathers published under the title of The

Kabbalah Unveiled3 an English translation of three of these treatises: the Siphrā di-

Zeni’uta, or “Book of the Concealed Mystery,” the Idra Rabbah, or “Greater Holy As-

sembly,” and the Idra Zuta, or “Lesser Holy Assembly,” together with an original in-

troduction on the subject.

Other important treatises making part of the Zohar are: “The Hidden Midrash,” “The

Mysteries of the Pentateuch,” “The Faithful Shepherd,” “The Secret of Secrets,” “Dis-

courses of the Aged in Mishpatim,” “Yanuka, or the Child,” and the “Aesh Met-

zareph,” the latter dealing with alchemical ideas.

Selected portions of the Zohar have been translated into French by Jean de Pauly,

and published by Éliphas Lévi as Le Livre des Splendeurs;4 and into English by Har-

ry Sperling and M. Simon.5 Translations of selected passages can also be found in

the most valuable and rare work of Isaac Myer, Qabbalah. The Philosophical Writings

of Solomon Ben Yehudah Ibn Gebirol or Avicebron,6 important especially on account

of its extensive historical Introductory. H.P. Blavatsky herself reviewed it at consider-

able length.7

1 Basel, 1608

2 Vol. I, Sulzbach, 1677-78; Vol. II, Frankfurt, 1684.

3 London: George Redway, 1887. 8vo., viii, 359pp.

4 Paris, 1894

5 5 vols., London, 1931-34

6 Philadelphia, 1888, xxiv, 499pp.

7 Lucifer, Vol. III, February 1889, pp. 505-12; vide later volumes of the present Series.





Page 16 of 17

In connection with the above general subject, the student may be referred to the fol-

lowing works: Adolf Jellinek, Moses ben Schemtob de Leon und seine Verhältniss zum

Sohar, Leipzig, 1851; E. Müller, Der Sohar und seine Lehre, 2nd ed., 1923; C.D. Gins-

burg, The Kabbalah: Its doctrines, development, and literature, London and Liverpool,

1866; Adolphe Franck, La Kabbale, Paris, 1843;1 and A.E. Waite, The Doctrine and

Literature of the Kabalah, London, 1902; and Secret Doctrine in Israel, London, 1913.

As to the Sēpher Yetzīrāh, or “Book of Formation,” it is reputed to be the oldest

known Kabbalistic work, attributed by tradition to Abraham himself, as also to Aki-

ba. It deals with permutations of numbers and letters, and is our first source for the

doctrine of emanations and the Sephīrōth. It is written in the Neo-Hebraic of the

Mishnāh, and is unquestionably of very ancient origin. The editio princeps is that of

Mantua, 1562, with several subsequent ones. The text and commentary by Dunash

ben Tamim have been published by M. Grossberg, London, 1902, and parts of it have

been translated by W. Wynn Westcott, London, l893. — See also the translation of P.

Davidson, Loudsville, Ga., and Glasgow, Scotland, 1896.

The earlier issues of several Theosophical periodicals contain valuable essays on the

subject of the Kabala in general, as well as various particular aspects of this pro-

found study. In H.P. Blavatsky’s days, several renowned Kabbalists wrote for Theo-

sophical publications. Among these essays, the following deserve special mention,

and are listed here for the benefit of the earnest student:

Buck, Dr. J.D.: “The Cabbalah,” The Theosophist, Vol. V, November 1883, pp.

44-45; seems to imply that J. Ralston Skinner had one or more unpublished

MSS. in his possession.

Lazarus, Montague R.: “The Kabbala and the Microcosm,” The Theosophist, Vol.

VIII, September 1887, pp. 767-74; Vol. IX, October, November, December 1887,

pp. 45-52, 119-24, 167-71 respectively. Copious excerpts from rare Kabbalistic

works; valuable as a correlation between Hebrew, Hindu and Greek views of the

constitution of man.

Pratt, Dr. Henry: “About the Kabbalah,” The Theosophist Vol. X, August 1889,

pp. 649-61; “Eloistic Mysteries,” ibid., Vol. XII, July 1891, pp. 591-99; Vol. XIII,

November 1891, January, February, April 1892, pp. 77-86, 244-51, 293-96,

418-25 respectively.

Chamier, D.: “The Kabalah and its Doctrine,” The Theosophist, Vol. XXIV, No-

vember 1902, pp. 90-97.

Pancoast, Dr. Seth: “Kabbalah,” The Path, Vol. I, April 1886, pp. 8-14; “The

Mystery of Numbers,” ibid., May 1886, pp. 37-41.

Skinner, J. Ralston: “Notes on the Cabbalah of the Old Testament,” The Path,

Vol. I, July and August 1886, pp. 103-8, 134-39 respectively.

1 English translation, Leipzig 1844





Page 17 of 17

Westcott, W. Wynn: “The Kabalah,” Lucifer, Vol. VIII, August 1891, pp. 465-69;

Vol. IX, September 1891, pp. 27-32; “A Further Glance at the Kabalah,” ibid.,

Vol. XII, April and May 1893, pp. 147-53, 202-8 respectively.

Leiningen, C. de: “The Soul according to the Quabalah.” Translated from the

German by Thomas Williams; orig. published in the Sphinx. Issued in London,

1890, as Theosophical Siftings, Vol. II, No. 18.

Saper Aude: “Some Anomalies in the Biblical Views of the Constitution of Man,”

issued in 1893 as Theos. Siftings, Vol. V, No. 16.

Wirth, Oswald: “Qabbalah,” Le Lotus, Vol. III, January 1889, pp. 625-32; text in

French.


Documents

Occultism and Kabbalah are only masks to hide the … · Blavatsky on Occultism and the real Kabbalah v. 13.11, , 28 May 2018 Page 1 of 17 Occultism and Kabbalah are only masks to